1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a sheet bundle printing system for printing on a piece of sheet (hereinafter simply referred to as “a sheet”) to be peeled off out of a sheet bundle such as a sticky note bundle (i.e., a bundle of sticky notes temporarily held together by partially and removably adhering them together for use by peeling off one by one) and the like, and also relates to a sheet bundle printer.
2. Related Art
In the known art, there is a sticky note printer (a sheet bundle printer) of this type, which pulls up an uppermost sticky note of a sticky note bundle that is set in the printer, pinches the pulled-up sticky note together with an ink ribbon between a thermal head and a platen roller, and then performs printing on the sticky note while feeding the sheet so as to peel it off, which is, for example, described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-212367.
Meanwhile, a blank sticky note may possibly be used, for example, when people use the sticky note to write a note or when people use it to mark magazines, or the like. Then, the sticky note printer needs to eject a blank sticky note (white sticky note) without performing printing on the sheet. However, in the above known sticky note printer, when a sticky note is fed without performing printing on it (when a blank sticky note is fed), it is conceivable that the platen roller and the thermal head pinch and feed the sticky note while the thermal head is not being driven (or is being driven with no printing data). In this case, it is preferable that the feeding of the ink ribbon is stopped in order to suppress a waste of ink ribbon. However, when the printer is operated in such a way, because the sticky note is fed as it slides on the ink ribbon, there is a problem that ink of the ink ribbon is rubbed to smudge the sticky note or the ink ribbon is also fed with the feeding of the sticky note (jamming of ink ribbon).